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Thanks Bro,
Here's the crux.... When you look at the christian culture of today and apply vs. 16-17 as you have described them; simple as it is...
How are we/you/I doing?

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LL,
I thought that was where you were coming from but wasn't sure. Yes, that makes much more sense... it may take me a while, but I'll catch on eventually.
So in applying this to what GraceBro has just added; are we (professing evangelical christians) capable of, and are we actually doing this? (coming to the light fully).
Can we or should we do better?

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ORIGINAL: GraceBro

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Thanks Bro,
Here's the crux.... When you look at the christian culture of today and apply vs. 16-17 as you have described them; simple as it is...
How are we/you/I doing?

It doesn't really matter how "we/you/I" are doing. That is the problem. We spend too much time "doing" Christianity and not enough time "being" Christians. None of us can live the Christian life. Jesus is the only one that ever did live it and now He wants to live it in and through us. All we can do is rest in His finished work for us and His resurrected life in us. But, too many Christians spend their entire existence trying to obtain or maintain their right standing before God through self-effort. You need look no farther than 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 to see how we cannot love like God can. But, He gave us everything for life and godliness and every spiritual blessing in Christ so we would not seek from the world that which can only be received in Christ. The quicker we realize that, let go of our denominational and church biases, the sooner we will see the type of Christianity everybody desires to see. Don't hold your breath!

Grace and Peace

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ORIGINAL: Liveloved

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LL,
I thought that was where you were coming from but wasn't sure. Yes, that makes much more sense... it may take me a while, but I'll catch on eventually.
So in applying this to what GraceBro has just added; are we (professing evangelical christians) capable of, and are we actually doing this? (coming to the light fully).
Can we or should we do better?

Great question. . . and BTW, I'm your sister. Just thought you should know.

What's the application? This is where evangelicals frequently get it all wrong---just as the pharisees did. It is not about 'doing'. It is about confessing and believing. I'll explain.

Coming to the light EXPOSES who we are, that we are not righteous, and that we cannot be righteous and that we desperately need a Savior. And this is not a one time event. It should be a moment by moment, daily knowing. The pharisees would not do this. And actually their 'doing', meeting the demands of the law, was a hindrance. It helped in their deception because they thought they were good because of their compliance to the Law. And we have to remember that according to the righteousness as found in the Law, Paul was found blameless. That's good. But not good enough. And that goodness becomes a part of what our heart uses to deceive.

So the pharisees and many today really don't come to the light. Oh, perhaps they had a one time experience where they saw and confessed that they were a sinner and in need of a Savior. But that moment passes and they go on living their 'good' life.

What Jesus is talking about is coming to the light, over and over, and over again. A continually being exposed so that He can show us ourselves. And then we confess our sin and cry out to Him and thank Him for being our Savior because we NEED one.

So what the church needs to be doing is CONFESSING their sin (and we must see it to confess it instead of trying to be 'good') and BELIEVING that Jesus is our righteousness.

Just this morning I was meditating on Galatians 5. The Galatians had gotten caught up in being 'good' again. And Paul is quite severe with them as he would be with those today who are actively pursuing their own goodness. He would say "it was for freedom that Christ set us free. . .do NOT be subject again to a yoke of slavery. . . you've been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law. . . for we through the Spirit by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness.

Do we understand, truly understand the message of grace? It's not about our being 'good'. It is about our confessing, continual confessing, being honest, truthful about our badness. And it is about having faith, trusting in Jesus, in the finished work of Jesus at Calvary, that has and is and will accomplish our righteousness.

Make sense?

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Not in the least LL.

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ORIGINAL: Liveloved

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Not in the least LL.

So, what doesn't make sense to you? Can you be more specific so I know where to begin in responding?

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Sorry LL, I was JJ, hence the JJ that came after that statement. I do agree with you.

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All of us should strive to live a Christ like life, which by no means is humanly possible, but as long as we don't hinder Him from working in us and through us by "loving the world", then at least we could be good examples for others.

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ORIGINAL: GraceBro


It doesn't really matter how "we/you/I" are doing. That is the problem. We spend too much time "doing" Christianity and not enough time "being" Christians.

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But, too many Christians spend their entire existence trying to obtain or maintain their right standing before God through self-effort.

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BTW, I'm your sister. Just thought you should know.

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It is not about 'doing'.

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Do we understand, truly understand the message of grace? It's not about our being 'good'. It is about our confessing, continual confessing, being honest, truthful about our badness. And it is about having faith, trusting in Jesus, in the finished work of Jesus at Calvary, that has and is and will accomplish our righteousness.

Make sense?

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I would hope that my idea of "doing" is the same as your idea of "being"...

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ORIGINAL: GraceBro

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All of us should strive to live a Christ like life, which by no means is humanly possible, but as long as we don't hinder Him from working in us and through us by "loving the world", then at least we could be good examples for others.

This is exactly what I was writing against. We don't live a life of "striving" to be like Christ. That is trying to be like God which is accepting the lie of the Devil. Besides why should we strive to live a life you admit is impossible to live? That is madness. Christians, if we are to do anything like Christ it is to do only what the Father tells us to do. And the Father speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. You can't strive to live like Christ and at the same time avoid hindering the Lord from working in you. By trying to live like Christ you are hindering Him from living through you. Because if you are trying to live like Christ, you have to have a system of rules in place to guide you. And that is living under the law, which is in direct opposition to living by faith.

Grace and Peace

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Do we understand, truly understand the message of grace? It's not about our being 'good'. It is about our confessing, continual confessing, being honest, truthful about our badness. And it is about having faith, trusting in Jesus, in the finished work of Jesus at Calvary, that has and is and will accomplish our righteousness.

Make sense?
Yes this is well put and understandable even for a je... me.
Would you agree that it is more than simply confessing though? Should'nt there be a turning from ones sin (not making a practice of) that accompanies the confession? (I don't doubt that you would agree to this, but felt that it should be noted).

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ORIGINAL: terryjohn

John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

By all means love the world for if you have not love you are nothing and the spirit of Chirst is not in you. If we loved the world as Christ did we too would give ourselves for it. Hence, the "love" referred to in 1 John 2:15 is not the love of God.

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If I send my kids to public school...GASP, what horror!!!!!!!....it could be worshipping the world...or not.

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If rival faiths do not provide a way to eternal life in the presence of God, then why subject one's children to indoctrination in those faiths?

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ORIGINAL: RJR_fan

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If I send my kids to public school...GASP, what horror!!!!!!!....it could be worshipping the world...or not.

Help me understand, here. I'm baffled.

What on earth is more precious than our own children?

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Who do we most yearn to see rejoicing with us forever in heaven?

Jesus. For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to the glory of God. Amen.

What alternate religious faith provides a way to heaven?

The life I now live by the faith of the Son of God, not my faith nor my righteousness.

If rival faiths do not provide a way to eternal life in the presence of God, then why subject one's children to indoctrination in those faiths?

Why indeed? All you'll end up with is a better sinner perhaps. Only Jesus saves. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing by the Word of God. As parents we certainly have the responsibility to expose our children to the Word as much as possible in both teaching, living, and believing.

What is so precious to us that it trumps raising our children in the Christian faith? Leisure? Comfort? Money? Cultural acceptability? What do we love more than the eternal welfare of the children God has entrusted to us?

Only Jesus. And COMMANDED us to forsake all and HATE all who will stand in our way (even our own flesh) of being His disciple. You have to ask yourself, does Jesus really mean this or is it some figure of speech?


As J. Gresham Machen said 80 years ago, "If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else."

Not found in the Bible.

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Why indeed? All you'll end up with is a better sinner perhaps. Only Jesus saves. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing by the Word of God. As parents we certainly have the responsibility to expose our children to the Word as much as possible in both teaching, living, and believing.

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The world in the sence of its influence, was defeated at the cross for those who believe.

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I need to be living my life in view of v. 17 knowing full well that this world is passing away, and that Heaven is my true home. Living with this reality does indeed take away the attraction that the world provides.

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For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds.

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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage;
even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a
strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle
with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance
between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.